Victory dumps player of year

Jesse Hogan

THE philosophy of Ange Postecoglou was evident on two fronts yesterday during his first training session at the helm of Melbourne Victory.

First, it was displayed when the players were practising bringing the ball out of defence in an intra-club drill, to his repeated shouts of "Don't play backward, play forward!" about their passing.

Second, it was after the session when the dual A-League championship coach was discussing his strategy to improve Victory's under-achieving squad, when he all but confirmed its recently crowned player of the year Ante Covic would be an unfortunate casualty of it.

"The reality of it is the club has two contracted goalkeepers [Tando Velaphi and Lawrence Thomas] and I don't think we'll be fitting in a third," he said.

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On a separate issue — the possible availability of Europe-based Socceroos veteran Scott Chipperfield — Postecoglou reaffirmed his recruiting preference "for guys who, for want of a better word, are a bit younger, in terms of [suiting] the kind of game we want to play".

Within a few hours the club confirmed that the 36-year-old Victory Medallist was "the unlucky one to make way" among the goalkeepers.

Covic joined Victory last October when Velaphi broke his leg on the eve of the season and held his first-choice position even when his rival regained full fitness, due to his authority in front of goal despite a porous defence. The two-time Socceroos representative was quoted by Victory as saying he "was pretty happy with my season last year and was hopeful of getting another contract, but sometimes things don't work out that way in football".

He was followed out of the club by Grant Brebner. While the decision regarding the Scotsman was not as unexpected as Covic's, it was nevertheless significant. The 34-year-old had been with Victory for all but the first of its seven seasons and was a member of both championship teams, in 2006-07 and 2008-09. The midfielder also enjoyed a late-career resurgence, winning the Victory Medal in 2010-11. His period at the club concludes with 120 appearances and six goals.

In the past six weeks the club has also released veterans Tom Pondeljak and Rodrigo Vargas and imports Fabio and Jean Carlos Solorzano.

Marquee striker Harry Kewell is in Europe while negotiations to activate the second year of his contract are completed, and will not be available for the looming home friendly against Olympiakos.

Postecoglou said yesterday he had yet to speak to enigmatic fan favourite Carlos Hernandez, but confirmed he bracketed him among the out-of-contract Victory players "we have to make a decision on".

"There were some initial discussions around his commercial arrangements, I'll have a look at that. We work within a salary cap so I've got to be able to make sure I can do what I want to do in terms of recruiting before we lock away too much of the salary cap," he said.

The new coach believed he had arrived at Victory with enough time to have a meaningful impact on the composition of next season's squad, but conceded he and his staff had to "start working pretty quickly" on approaching replacement players.

"I'm anxious to get things pretty much locked away by the end of this month. There's a fair bit of work between now and then to get in the ones we want," he said.

While Victory has two foreign-player vacancies — and will have a third if Hernandez is not retained — Postecoglou said that "with some clubs being up in the air there's some good [Australian] players who potentially could be available . . . that's what we'll go to first".

The Victory squad that began training yesterday, and which will make the bulk of the team to face Olympiakos at Etihad Stadium on May 19, is infused with youth-team players, alongside veterans such as Archie Thompson and Danny Allsopp. The period between now and the friendly will feature a low-key approach to training, but Postecoglou vowed the formal start of its pre-season in mid-June would herald a tougher approach.

"After the Olympiakos game the boys will have a break, and . . . I'm definite that when they come back it will be a different sort of environment . . . and we'll have everything in place," he said.